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Most coverage of autonomous vehicles has focused on cars with human passengers in them. But there's also a big opportunity to use autonomous vehicles to transform the retail sector. And one promising company in that emerging industry is Nuro, a startup founded by two early members of the Google self-driving car team.

Now Nuro is announcing its first commercial partnership: with Kroger, one of the nation's leading grocery chains. Starting this fall, Kroger plans to start delivering groceries to customers using Nuro's autonomous vehicles.

Initially, the partnership will only be active in a single market—the companies haven't yet said which city that will be. But Nuro's goal is to eventually provide service across Kroger's entire retail footprint.

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And that footprint is large. In addition to Kroger stores, the company also owns the Dillons, Harris Teeter, QFC, Ralphs, Roundy's, and Smiths supermarket chains, among others. In total, Kroger says it owns 2,800 stores in 35 states.

Nuro differs from some other autonomous delivery startups—including Starship and Marble—because its vehicles are designed to operate on public streets rather than on sidewalks. Its vehicles are designed to travel at speeds up to 25 mph (40 km/h)—fast enough to keep up with traffic in a lot of residential neighborhoods. Nuro hopes to increase its maximum speed to 35 mph (55 km/h) as its technology matures.

Why self-driving delivery vehicles are easier than self-driving taxis

A big reason Nuro has been able to get a commercial service to market quickly—possibly even launching before the founders' former employer Waymo—is that transporting goods is an easier problem than transporting people. Passenger vehicles not only need enough space for a human passenger but also for safety equipment like airbags. Nuro's vehicles don't need any of that, so they're small and light and will do much less damage than a full-size car if they run into something.

A taxi service needs to reach the destination quickly—which is why Waymo's vehicles are designed to travel at highway speeds. In contrast, a bag of groceries isn't in a hurry, so slower speeds aren't a problem.

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Low speeds mean a much shorter stopping distance and much lower chance of serious injury if it were to hit a pedestrian or another vehicle. Shorter stopping distances also mean that low-speed vehicles don't need the expensive long-range lidar sensors required for highway driving.

"Our vehicle is half the width of a Toyota Corolla," Nuro co-founder Dave Ferguson told us in an interview last month. "If you think about it from a pure safety and flexibility standpoint, we have an extra 3-4 foot of safety buffer in terms of width that we can dynamically position around the vehicle." For example, suppose there is a row of parked cars on one side of a Nuro vehicle; it can then hug the opposite side of its lane, giving it more time to brake if a child darts out between two parked cars.

Ferguson told Ars that this could ultimately prove to be a huge market. Most people are used to driving their cars to stores to buy stuff, but it's likely to actually be more efficient—environmentally, economically, and in terms of customer time—to have stores send products out to customers on demand. In the long run, we could see retail stores gradually transform from destinations for human shoppers into warehouses for loading autonomous vehicles.

Promoted Comments

Perhaps just me....but I rarely find myself in a grocery emergency....

But you know what would be an awesome use for these little buggers? Home Depot.

How many times have you been neck deep in a project and realized you needed a different size socket wrench, 3 4x4 posts, and another bag of quickcrete, and if you leave to actually go buy them you'll have to redo half the stuff or wait to finish it the next weekend?

As I understand, the market for home delivery of groceries has shown to be pretty limited. I don't see that using robotic delivery would change that. So I'm not sure why they feel compelled to invest so much.

I'd save my corporate $$. The technology will be readily available once it is developed. I see no big advantage to being a 'leader' in this particular tech if you are a grocery chain.

Maybe they just fear Amazon.

One of the biggest reasons the market for home delivery of groceries has proven limited because it's really expensive to pay someone to drive groceries to customers' homes. It'll be a lot cheaper to do once you don't have to pay a human driver. And that lower cost also means that they can afford to deliver groceries more quickly (since you don't need to worry about carefully planning delivery routes to minimize wasted time for the driver).

And when you make something cheaper and more convenient, more people tend to be interested! It's impossible to say how much larger the market will get, but it seems virtually certain that it'll be bigger than it is today, and probably a lot bigger.

I'm 15 minutes from closest decent grocery store, which is a Fred Meyer. My wife shops groceries more than I, but both of us have become huge fans of their Click List. No problems with produce selection or substitutions-they do a good job. Now we can't stand the idea of going into the store. Give me a window of time to be home where we don't have to spend 30 minutes driving to pick it up? Take my money.